Category: building and creating

I’ve definitely been feeling the rising tides of spring. Serious housecleaning started last fall, when we adopted a kitten who was likely to get into all sorts of small hiding places if I didn’t clean and move things to reduce the number of hiding places. It continued in November and December, when the plan to have family over for holiday dinners created an intense need for the house to look absolutely perfect. (I have kids, so it doesn’t ever reach perfection, but you have to try.)

So things were ticking along nicely when we had a series of family health crises: in January, my dad was hospitalized for about two weeks with heart problems (he’s now recovering well at home); in February, my husband’s grandmother had cancer for the sixth and final time; in March, my mother-in-law slipped and fell on some ice in her driveway, breaking her knee (she’s also recovering at home). Each event has been a pretty damn big deal.

The past few months have been instructive for me in caring for people I love, for maintaining family connections and support networks, and also for not immediately rushing to solve everything and do all the heavy lifting myself. (I was really glad I was starting from a mostly clean house, though, instead of coming home and freaking out about the mess.)

In the meantime, I’ve taken over the writing and performance of regular public Full Moon rituals at Artes & Craft. Because of family stuff, I’ve only performed one of the three I’ve written so far, but they’ve all been well received. On Saturday, my husband/working partner and I led the Vernal Equinox ritual, part of the Provider Cycle, a Chthonioi-specific bit of liturgy. I’m kinda still processing my experience of that, but the short version is that I feel like I’ve leveled up as a priestess, both for being able to pull off the ritual (attending to all the details, from baking cakes and buying flowers to coordinating ritual roles and blocking) and for the actual magickal experience that the doing of it gave me.

Which brings me to one of the reasons I’m writing here today. I’m busier than I ever have been, but because much of this work involves other people, I am far more hesitant to blog about it. I still think and process by writing about things, but I keep that writing private these days. Much has changed, in me personally and in the world at large, since I started this blog. I’m not really sure what the direction of it should be — except I do still want some sort of signpost out there, some way for seekers to find me.

I’ve done some site updates and added some dates to the Upcoming Events calendar. What happens next, I’m not sure, but I’ll say that my weekends are pretty well booked for much of 2019.

It’s been a bit! I said in my last post that the beginning of the year would be quiet, and that certainly seems to have been the case. This year I’ve been doing more than thinking, planning, or writing, which is a much-needed step in my own personal growth. I’m very Air-oriented and live in my head a lot of the time, and I occasionally need reminders that visualizing a spell or a ritual that should work is not the same as physically performing the spell or involving other people in doing the ritual. (I’m thinking of two instances this year in which I had grand plans that looked excellent on paper, but in reality, they didn’t end up happening the way I envisioned. This is fine, though! This is experience, and learning, and the accumulation of wisdom to do things differently next time.)

In the spring, from March through late May, I did a daily working for self-confidence that was centered on the solar plexus chakra. (In April I finished a year of daily meditation with the Insight app, and a lot of my meditations worked with chakras, so this was a natural extension of that.) This was a solid, well-timed working and did what I wanted it to do… except I didn’t plan a big finish or really any kind of ending, and it just sort of petered out. I’d like to revisit it in the waning year.

Since my intensive work with Tarot last year, I’ve acquired some skill, and I continue to read publicly on occasion (usually on a Saturday at Artes & Craft when my coven sister, the regular Tarot reader, isn’t available). I’ll be doing Tarot readings this coming Saturday at Artes & Craft’s booth at Grand Rapids Pagan Pride Day.

Other parts of my work in the past few months have not been glamorous: coordinating coven events, doing some of the cooking for those coven events, helping with setup beforehand or cleanup afterward. A covener died unexpectedly this summer, so there was much to do to honor her life and mark her passing (and Samhain is still to come).

And — I’m burying the lede here, yes — this month I was initiated and am now a first degree in Cththonioi-Alexandrian Wicca. *confetti toss* I’ve told the story of my seeking many times; altogether, it was about 13 years from my serious pursuit of BTW to initiation. (I’ll clarify that from the start of my seeking to finding Blue Star and beginning study was pretty fast, only about a year, although I moved cross-country in that year. But I wanted initiation, and there were other twists, turns, delays, and detours along my path to that goal.) I would say that I’m still adjusting — that’s a long time to say not yet, I’m not, not yet, not yet — but I have a whole lot on my plate right now, and it’s starting to feel like the gods are saying, “You’re here, excellent! Now it’s time to really get to work.”

On Saturday, MoonFire will be presenting a Dionysus ritual at GRPPD. On Sept. 22, the following Saturday, I will be leading a public Full Moon Esbat at Artes & Craft; the next day, Sunday, Sept. 23, I will be co-leading a public Harvest Home ritual, also at Artes & Craft. These are excellent opportunities to come talk to me in person, if that’s a thing you would like to do!

It’s the season for Year Ahead Tarot spreads (if you didn’t do one at Samhain). Here’s one from The Wild Unknown, which is also a deck I got for Yule! I laid down the cards one space to the right, so they go around like the numbers on a clock face, and mine actually looked more like a diamond so it was easier to see which cards were reversed. But this is a pretty spread image that gives you the general idea.

I won’t spend hundreds of words talking about my cards here, but there was a pretty strong Wands influence and a theme of power and authority. Which, since I don’t wield a whole lot of authority in other aspects of my life, made me think of this not-coven I’m building.

Honestly, it doesn’t look like this was the year it will come together. I didn’t see or intuitively sense any other people in the cards. And yet… what else have I been working on here?

So, this year, I might be talking more about building and creating. I might post more in general and find something to talk about at least once in the month. (The first half of the year might be pretty quiet, my cards say.) There might be more literal woodwork, as well; I’ve got a broom and a staff to work on, and yesterday I was talked out of building a bookcase because the temperature has been in the single digits and the garage is not only not heated, it has some gaps big enough to see daylight through. I’m also considering creating a fiery oil to dress candles with and encourage that Wands energy, which doesn’t come all that naturally to me.